Karl Barth: He Wasn’t a Universalist Like Origen. He Was Worse

Karl Barth has been charged with teaching Universalism. When he denies this he is not altogether wrong. He knows too much about the not particularly illustrious theologians who have taught this doctrine of Apokatastasis in Christian history to be willing to allow himself to be numbered among them. “The Church ought not to preach Apokatastasis” (p. 529). Thus Barth’s doctrine is not that of Origen and his followers. Rather, Barth goes much further. For none of them ever dared to maintain that through Jesus Christ, all, believers and unbelievers, are saved from the wrath of God and participate in redemption through Jesus Christ. But that is what Karl Barth teaches. — Emil Brunner